"partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their "candidates of choice" - identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black. The department ruled that white voters in Kinston will vote for blacks only if they are Democrats and that therefore the city cannot get rid of party affiliations for local elections because that would violate black voters' right to elect the candidates they want. "

The decision, made by the same Justice official who ordered the dismissal of a voting rights case against members of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, has irritated other locals as well. They bristle at federal interference in this city of nearly 23,000 people, two-thirds of whom are black.

Finally, as a PSA, learn the Heimlich maneuver people.  The life you save may mean a lot to you.

Thank you Drill SGTS Jones, Graham and Thomas and all my instructors at in the 232nd Medical Battalion.  You’re good instruction came in handy today.

Democrats spent most of 2007 and 2008 telling us that we had to pull out of Iraq or that we had taken our eye off of the ball in Afghanistan. 

Obama himself told us that Afghanistan was the “good war”. Now, that he’s in power, Democrats are beginning to admit that all of that “good war” rhetoric was to enhance their macho image as they called for withdrawals from Iraq.

Escalation is a bad idea. The Democrats backed themselves into defending the idea of Afghanistan being The Good War because they felt they needed to prove their macho bonafides when they called for withdrawal from Iraq. Nobody asked too many questions sat the time, including me. But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy.

There have been many campaign promises “adjusted” since the election. There is no reason that the administration should feel any more bound to what they said about this than all the other committments it has blithely turned aside in the interest of “pragmatism.”

I find it interesting that they are coming out and admitting it.  I find it hilarious that he basically called Obama a liar.

It makes me sick that Democrats were willing to us this and slurs like “chicken hawk” to score political points considering they weren’t signing up in droves to fight the “good war.”

Like most people in the service, I give the Air Force hell.  That’s just inter-service rivalry.  Here’s a group of men that do a tough job, 24/7.  They deserve all the respect we can give them.  Hats off to the men of the Combat Rescue Squadrons.  You never want to see them because if you do things have gone to hell.  If you need to see them you really want to see them.

The 129th Rescue flew 1500 Combat hours in four months and had 397 combat saves during that time.

Various squadrons have saved over two hundred lives so far this year.

Did you ever wonder how we got in the mess we’re in?  Pete Stark-D Wonderland, is the prime example of the attitude of our “representatives”.  Watch him in the embedded video.  He has the gall to tell us that that the national debt is good, because the more we borrow, the wealthier we are!  The interviewer calls him on it several times and he asks, “Where did you go to school.”  When he hears the answer, the University of Puerto Rico he laughs.  Later in the interview he tells him that he should have went to a good school.  The arrogance of the man is astounding.  It boils down to, “You plebes should listen to your betters because we went to good schools and are smarter than you are”.

I’m not doing the video justice so go watch it for yourself.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574375012840827276.html

The report shows us two things…

1) Nancy Pelosi LIED about not being briefed on Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.

2) The program was well thought out, briefed to Congress and provided valuable information.

Whoever advised people to be skeptical of what they read in the papers must have had in mind this week’s coverage of the documents about CIA interrogations. Now that we’ve had a chance to read the reports, it’s clear the real story isn’t the few cases of abuse played up by the media. The news is that the program was thoughtfully developed, carefully circumscribed, briefed to Congress, and yielded information crucial to disrupting Al Qaeda.

That’s the essential judgment offered by former CIA Inspector General John Helgerson in his 2004 report. Some mild criticism aside, the report says the CIA “invested immense time and effort to implement the [program] quickly, effectively, and within the law”; that the agency “generally provided good guidance and support”; and that agency personnel largely “followed guidance and procedures and documented their activities well.”

Isn’t that a kick in the teeth.  After years of hearing how “torture” doesn’t work we find out that indeed, it does. 

Congress also knew about it. The IG report belies House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s claims that she wasn’t told about all this. “In the fall of 2002, the Agency briefed the leadership of the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committees on the use of both standard techniques and EITs. . . . Representatives . . . continued to brief the leadership of the Intelligence Oversight Committees on the use of EITs and detentions in February and March 2003. The [CIA] General Counsel says that none of the participants expressed any concern about the techniques or the Program . . .” Ditto in September 2003.

So Nancy Pelosi lied.  She was briefed and used the CIA as a pawn to further her own career.  Shocking!

The most revealing portion of the IG report documents the program’s results. The CIA’s “detention and interrogation of terrorists has provided intelligence that has enabled the identification and apprehension of other terrorists and warned of terrorist plots planned for the United States and around the world.” That included the identification of Jose Padilla and Binyam Muhammed, who planned to detonate a dirty bomb, and the arrest of previously unknown members of an al Qaeda cell in Karachi, Pakistan, designated to pilot an aircraft attack in the U.S. The information also made the CIA aware of plots to attack the U.S. consulate in Karachi, hijack aircraft to fly into Heathrow, loosen track spikes to derail a U.S. train, blow up U.S. gas stations, fly an airplane into a California building, and cut the lines of suspension bridges in New York….This conclusion is buttressed by two other CIA documents released this week, one from 2004 and another from 2005, that outline interrogation results.

So we now have three reports that tell us the tangible results of the EIT program.  The CIA agents work hard to protect America and this is how they get repaid.  The thing is, they knew this was going to happen and accepted the risk to protect their fellow Americans.

CIA officials well understood that they might be second-guessed years later by politicians. “During the course of this review, a number of Agency officers expressed unsolicited concern about the possibility of recrimination or legal action resulting from their participation. . . . officers expressed concern that a human rights group might pursue them for activities . . . they feared that the Agency would not stand behind them.” Another said, “Ten years from now we’re going to be sorry we’re doing this . . . [but] it has to be done.”

This is how we are going to repay men and women that put it on the line to protect the US?  By prosecuting them for using techniques that worked?  To those that call water boarding torture, we use it in SERE School on our own people.  I can’t conclude my article any better than the WSJ did so I’ll just use their conclusion.

The outrage here isn’t that government officials used sometimes rough interrogation methods to break our enemies. The outrage is that, years later, when the political winds have shifted and there hasn’t been another attack, our politicians would punish the men and women who did their best to protect Americans in a time of peril.

Go look at them, they are different…I will warn you, what has been seen, can’t be unseen.

Just to give you a taste…Enjoy a picture of Obama, Joe Stalin, a unicorn and House!

http://soldiersangels.org/index.php?page=valour-it-fundraising-raffle

On a related note, you used to be able to use Pay Pal to contribute to Valour-IT but Pay Pal has pulled the Soldier’s Angels account over the raffle.  Paypal’s PR department can be reached at (408) 376-7458. Be polite!  You’ll catch more flies with honey!